Three million people live in Syria’s last major rebel bastion of Idlib, many of them families who fled homes elsewhere in Syria and are now reduced to living in camps without basic amenities.
Almost one million more have been thrown onto the roads since December, after the government launched a deadly offensive that has battered the region’s already dilapidated healthcare system.
The government on Sunday announced Syria’s first officially confirmed Coronavirus case, sparking fears of the implications for the war-torn country, where many still live outside the control of the government.
The virus is the latest threat to the three million people who live in Idlib, where a fragile truce has largely halted the government’s bombardment since the start of the month.
The region is dominated by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate, though other rebel groups are also present.
Across the region, aid workers are bracing for a possible wave of the illness.
For a start, a laboratory in Idlib received 300 diagnosis kits on Tuesday and has started using them, a doctor said.
“But these kits are still very few in view of the population density we have here,” said doctor Mohammad Shaham Mekki.
The World Health Organization has said it hopes to send in 2,000 more tests soon.
In case there are positive cases, three hospitals with intensive care units have been modified as isolation units equipped with ventilators, it said.
But in another tent settlement near the Idlib town of Harem, 40-year-old grandmother Umm Khaled says she still fears for the other six members of her family.
“There are no medical services or medicines in the camp,” she says.
She says she has taught the children to wash their hands with soap and water, and turn away from other people when they sneeze.
She also does her best to regularly bathe the children and keep the family’s tent clean.
But it’s difficult to maintain basic hygiene when there is not enough water to go around.
